ARTICLES ABOUT STRONGMAN BY DATE - PAGE 3

They call him President Bush's strongman, a hulk masquerading as a diplomat. His arms are so massive they threaten to ripple out of his suit jackets. Even Imus has noticed. "He looks like the Michelin Man in a suit," said Don Imus, host of "Imus in the Morning," a nationally syndicated radio talk show that is simulcast on MSNBC. As a 57-year-old former Navy officer who bench-presses 330 pounds, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage is more than a walking advertisement for the bulked-up set. At an estimated 5 feet 10 inches and more than 250 pounds, the No. 2 diplomat at the State Department is the highest-ranking official in the administration -- at least outside the Oval Office -- who is a devoted iron jock.

There's an old con-man trick in which you wrap a $100 bill around a batch of singles and use the wad to bedazzle your marks while relieving them of their cash. Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi seems not to deal in sums as small as $100, but you have to wonder whether he isn't trying to run some sort of con on his fellow African leaders. On the world's poorest continent, whose masses are afflicted in huge numbers with every imaginable kind of plague and pestilence, Gadhafi is trying to convince people that the road to salvation runs to Tripoli.

Latin America has a long and miserable history of populist demagogues who rise to power making grand promises to relieve the suffering of the poor, only to self-destruct through arrogance and ineptitude. But most countries in the region have progressed beyond that painful stage of development. With the resignation Friday of elected strongman Hugo Chavez, maybe Venezuela can move on to better things too. It's not every day that a democracy benefits from the military's intervention to force out an elected president.

`It's warm, sure, but there have been hotter days. We aren't going to start canceling school because it gets a little warm. All of the schools that don't have air conditioning have fans.' -- Chicago Schools chief Paul Vallas, after some school districts sent children home early on Thursday because of the heat. `Nobody knows if it's going to happen again. I'll still swim, but maybe not out so far.' -- Jack Walachowski, from Chicago, as vacationers in Florida on Thursday waded in waters near where a swimmer was fatally attacked by a shark in an inlet off the Gulf of Mexico near Tampa the day before.

Sick, bewildered and besieged at his home by angry protesters, former President Suharto was formally charged Thursday with corruption during his 32 years of unchecked power in Indonesia. The charge involves only a small portion of the corruption that characterized his rule, but it sends a significant signal of Indonesia's attempts to overhaul its economy and political system and lay the basis for the rule of law. President Abdurrahman Wahid has said repeatedly that he would pardon Suharto but only after the legal process is complete.

Rwanda's military strongman, Paul Kagame, was elected president on Monday, becoming the first ethnic Tutsi head of state since the country won independence from Belgium in 1962. Kagame won an overwhelming mandate in a secret ballot by government ministers and parliamentarians to replace Pasteur Bizimungu, who stepped down last month. The former rebel leader, whose forces ended the country's 1994 genocide and ousted the Hutu government, beat rival presidential candidate Charles Muligande of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, 81 votes to five.

If there's a connection between democracy and the amount of verbiage in a country's constitution, Venezuela may soon become another Switzerland. Venezuelans vote Dec. 15 on a new constitution that weighs in at 350 articles--compared to seven in its American counterpart. It is an astounding document, even in a region where such Magna Cartas often blend politics, magical realism and wishful thinking. Among the proposed charter's laundry list of "guarantees" are sports and recreation for all youngsters, jobs and benefits for workers, protections for the disabled, and good health care for everyone.

A Dutch court sentenced the former ruler of Suriname to 16 years in prison and a $2.3 million fine Friday for running a cocaine smuggling ring in his South American homeland. But Dutch authorities will first have to catch the former leader, Desi Bouterse, who remains at large and politically powerful in Suriname, a former Dutch colony on the northeast coast of South America. He was convicted in absentia. On the eve of the verdict, he dismissed his trial as "a political game" in an interview with Surinamese radio.

A band of pro-government activists beat and shot at opposition demonstrators Friday and the military warned of stronger action, saying it could not allow what it called the "worrying anarchy" of opposition protests. One person was shot dead and several others were beaten and shot by teenagers flying the banner of the government party led by Hun Sen, the country's strongman. The teens were commanded by older men on motorbikes who appeared to be plainclothes security men. "Police have been ordered not to intervene, just to protect certain places," said Khieu Kanharith, a government spokesman.

Military police fired hundreds of rounds into the air to disperse protesters Monday after strongman Hun Sen launched a crackdown against his political opponents. Hun Sen ordered anti-government demonstrations in the capital to end by midnight and called for the arrest of opposition leader Sam Rainsy, blaming him for a grenade attack on his home Monday. The government later rescinded that deadline, and aides to Sam Rainsy claimed he had sought United Nations protection. After three minutes of intense firing outside the luxury Cambodiana Hotel on Monday, protesters fled but later returned again and again.